UNC Charlotte students host encampment while protesting Israel-Hamas conflict
CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — UNC Charlotte students set up tents in front of the student union to protest the university’s “complicity” in Israel’s conflict in Gaza. Supporters of the Palestinian community want the school to pull out of an archaeology effort in Israel called the Mount Zion Project.
Organizers of the project say it’s meant to examine how people have lived over Jerusalem’s 3,000-year history. Students declined an on-camera interview Tuesday, but one protester recently told us how she felt.
“We demand that they discontinue their funding of an archeological project called Mount Zion, which directly promotes the displacement of Palestinians within Palestine,” she told Queen City News.
The UNC Charlotte protest is just one of the nationwide campus demonstrations protesting the Israel-Hamas war’s civilian death toll. UNC-Chapel Hill and Columbia University are among many schools with campus conflicts over the war.
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Students say this is the best way to have their voices heard.
“The truth is, we are the most humane people standing out here today because we are fighting for the liberation of people who are not on this land, but on another land that belongs to them,” she said.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Encampment Coalition sent Queen City News this statement in place of an on-camera interview.
“We are a coalition of students and activists that stand here today in solidarity with Palestinians, while we also hold solidarity with fellow students at other universities such as Chapel Hill who have been struggling through violent police repression in the recent days. We want to ensure that our main goal is for the liberation of Palestine. The university does not want us protesting out here today, they have made it clear through means of intimidation as well as threats of suspension and arrests that our protest is not welcomed, but despite this we refuse to move and we refuse to be silent. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is not only complicit but is an active participant in the brutal genocide in Gaza, through investments in Israel and the Mount Zion Archeological Project UNCC has shown itself to uphold the violent imperialist institutions of this country. We hold our encampment and demand the following:
1. DISCLOSE all institutional expenditures, such as direct and indirect investments, stocks, and funding to Israel. We demand COMPLETE transparency to where our student funds are being spent to! As students, if our funds are being sent to Israel to support a genocide that makes us in-turn complicit. UNCC has also been cutting the funding of DEI and professors’ salaries, if they truly cared for the students and faculty of this campus the money that is being sent to Israel would instead be put in place to support DEI and increase professors’ salaries.
2. DIVEST from all companies, partnerships, and projects that participate in the ongoing colonization and genocide of Palestinians. Every dollar that is sent to Israel is in turn used to continue the 75-year-long occupation and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We must place economic pressure on Israel to stop this continued humanitarian crime.
3. DEFEND Palestine activists, protests, and movements on campus. Our protests have been repressed consistently over the past few months, the university has used multiple different policies in an attempt to silence and dissuade our actions. We refuse to be intimidated into inaction by a university that claims to be a space for freedom of speech and expression.
4. DECLARE the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza to be a humanitarian crime, illegal and indefensible. This is not a war between Hamas and Israel. This is a genocide being committed against the Palestinians! If UNCC cannot admit the truth of what is happening in Gaza then they can not claim to be an institution of truth and education.
We would also wish to explain our reasoning for declining an interview. We have done multiple interviews over the past few months with various different news networks. Every time our words have been misrepresented, edited out, or framed poorly. Until we can trust that these networks are truly listening to us and representing us honestly we no longer wish to do interviews and will simply send a written statement signed off by the collective.”
“It’s not going to get anywhere,” says freshman Matthew Kingsley. “It’s very unfortunate, though.”
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